Massimo D'Alema

Early life and education

D'Alema was born in Rome on 20 April 1949, the son of Giuseppe D'Alema, a partisan in the Italian resistance movement within the Patriotic Action Groups and communist politician, and Fabiola Modesti. He joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) at the age of 14 and began his political career in Pisa, where he was studying philosophy. He was praised as enfant prodige by the then PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti and took part in the protests of 1968, alongside his friend Fabio Mussi.

Career

Italian Communist Youth Federation

In 1975, D'Alema was elected national secretary of the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI). It was during this period that D'Alema and Walter Veltroni met each other, and with him a dualism would form, without any public attacks. Years later, Veltroni recounted: "Massimo came from the party to more severely lead a rebel FGCI, I was more attentive to the movements." In 1983, he became regional secretary of the PCI's Apulian federation. The then PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer sent D'Alema in China to improve relations with the Chinese Communists after the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, and D'Alema followed Berlinguer in Moscow for the funeral of Yuri Andropov in 1984.

During the 1980s, the PCI's road to government did not succeed. To the press who reported a significant drop in membership, D'Alema replied that it was not only a problem of the PCI or of Italy but concerned all mass parties in the Western world, citing Christian Democracy (DC) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), the then main parties of government. He said: "I would like to know how many members the DC and the PSI have ... who escape this discussion not because they too do not have problems of this type, but simply because they are not transparent. And yet we are." According to D'Alema, the other parties registered through the distribution of card packages, while the PCI had a modern form of individual and voluntary registration. In the meantime, there was the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the turning point of the Bolognina.

From 1988 to 1990, D'Alema was the director of L'Unità, formerly the official newspaper of the PCI, which subsequently became the newspaper of the DS. A journalist by profession, he also wrote for Città futura and Rinascita. It is recounted that D'Alema hated other journalists and that this was reciprocal, due to his word of scorn and haughtiness, allegations that he always denied. One notable case was a 1995 interview with Lucia Annunziata, which was sensational for its lucidity regarding the relationship between the powers that be and Italian media information. He explained how the press had lost its historical references, namely a solid political system, which guaranteed clarity of alignment, and how what he described as the new anarchy that emerged bore the sign of the "unqualified destructuring of the political democracy". He was asked "Do the 'powers that be' play the shambles of politics?", to which he replied: "There is no doubt. Information has been a formidable tool that has contributed to the disintegration and loss of authority of political power. No political power can survive information that spies on him through the keyhole as he goes to the toilet." Despite his criticism of the mass media, D'Alema came to accept the change of times and accepted invitations to Porta a Porta and was a host of Gianni Morandi's show, where he sang "C'era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones". He and Morandi had met at the association football charity match between politicians and journalists.

From the Italian Communist Party to the Democrats of the Left

D'Alema entered the PCI's national secretariat in 1986 and supported the transformation into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), which was launched by Achille Occhetto and made official by the Rimini party congress in February 1991. He was a notable member of the PCI, the bulk of which in 1991 became the PDS and in 1998 formed the Democrats of the Left (DS). It was during this period in the late 1980s and early 1990s that D'Alema found his first political enemies, who gave vitriolic interviews, such as the reformist Napoleone Colajanni, who criticized D'Alema and Occhetto for their lack of vision upon reaching the highest party positions. In the past, the selection went through hunger, debates in assembly, and the police of Scelba when communists were persecuted. In the post-war years, a qualified young communist flowed into the PCI for whom the communist militia coincided with a lifestyle choice. D'Alema embodied an anthropological turning point, where the Leninist concept of professional revolutionaries was rejected in favour of salaried party executives comparable to public administrators and union officials.

1994 saw the PCI tradition of the sole candidate for the party secretariat, the leader designated from above, broken. After Occhetto's resignation, D'Alema announced his candidacy to succeed him. When he learned that Veltroni would also do so, he entered Claudio Petruccioli's studio and told him: "I will certainly be elected, but have you thought what would happen if Veltroni were elected? With my opposition, it wouldn't last two months." As the PDS secretary, D'Alema attempted to normalize relations with Silvio Berlusconi, who later broke it, for institutional reforms. Following the loss of the PDS and Occhetto-led Alliance of Progressives in the 1994 Italian general election, D'Alema supported the creation of The Olive Tree coalition that opened up to centrist and moderate forces, whether secular or Catholic. In the internal life of the party, mostly during its transition from PCI to PDS, he stressed that its roots in Marxism should be renovated, with the aim to create a modern Western European social-democratic party. He was a member of Italy's Chamber of Deputies since 1987 and president of the PDS parliamentary group from 1992 to 1994. In July 1994, he became its national secretary and surpassed Veltroni, his direct competitor, in the votes of the national council. Under his leadership, the PDS conducted a tough opposition against the first Berlusconi government (May 1994 – January 1995), and then became part of the majority government that supported the subsequent Dini government (January 1995 – May 1996), including the Italian People's Party and the Northern League, among others.

Centre-left coalition governments

D'Alema became prime minister thanks to Francesco Cossiga and part of the right-wing opposition, after the crisis of the first Prodi government. A month after becoming prime minister, D'Alema left the secretariat of the DS to Veltroni and assumed the presidency of the party. The first D'Alema government continued on the path of financial recovery and privatization, as well as the reform of the welfare state. The differences within the majority were accentuated with the formation of the new grouping of The Democrats, which were linked to Prodi and Antonio Di Pietro and that often made the government's path bumpy, and also forced to deal with a difficult situation on the international level, as Italy took part in the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999.

D'Alema supported Italy's commitment in the NATO air intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in favour of Kosovo (March–June 1999). The intervention was also supported by Silvio Berlusconi and the right-wing opposition, while some of those further to the left, such as the PRC, strongly contested it. The government suffered setbacks at the 1999 European Parliament election in Italy, which was held in June, and new tensions in the majority led in December 1999 to his government’s resignation and the establishment of the second D'Alema government, in which greater weight was given to The Democrats.

Both as party leader and prime minister, D'Alema argued for a long time with Sergio Cofferati, the then powerful and undisputed leader of the CGIL trade union. About labour issues, he said: "Precisely if we want to push forward a labour policy, we must have the courage of a work of renewal. ... I felt Cofferati, even unlike on other occasions, more closed and deaf. We feel challenged by reality to a necessary critical reflection. Mobility, flexibility, are above all a fact of reality. And even something which corresponds to a different way, in the new generation, of looking at work and at one's relationship with work." At the 1997 party congress, he unexpectedly attacked the CGIL. He said: "Mobility and flexibility are above all a fact of reality ... we must build new and more flexible networks of representation and protection. If we don't put ourselves on this ground, we will represent more and more only a segment of the world of work." Additionally, he promoted a Florence conference on the Third Way, in the presence of two personalities far from the tradition of the Italian left: Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Mitrokhin Commission

In November 2006, the new Italian Parliament with a centre-left coalition majority instituted a commission to investigate the Mitrokhin Commission for allegations that it was manipulated for political purposes. The Mitrokhin Commission, which was established in 2002 by the centre-right coalition majority closed in 2006 with a majority and a minority report, without reaching shared conclusions, and without any concrete evidence given to support the original allegations of KGB ties to Italian politicians contained in the Mitrokhin Archive. The centre-right coalition-led commission was criticized as politically motivated, as it was focused mainly on allegations against opposition figures.

November 2006 saw the publication of telephone interceptions between the chairman of the Mitrokhin Commission, Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti, and Scaramella. In the wiretaps, Guzzanti made it clear that the true intent of the Mitrokhin Commission was to support the hypothesis that Prodi would have been an agent financed or in any case manipulated by Moscow and the KGB. According to the opposition, which submitted its own minority report, this hypothesis was false, and the purpose of the commission was therefore to discredit opposition politicians. In the wiretaps, Scaramella had the task of collecting testimonies from some ex-agents of the Soviet secret service refugees in Europe to support these accusations; he was later charged for calumny. In a December 2006 interview given to the television program La storia siamo noi, colonel ex-KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky, whom Scaramella claimed as his source, confirmed the accusations made against Scaramella regarding the production of false material relating to D'Alema, Prodi, and other Italian politicians, and underlined their lack of reliability.

From the Democratic Party to Free and Equal

In 2010, D'Alema was elected president of the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic (COPASIR), a position he held until 2013, and of the Foundation of European Progressive Studies (FEPS). In 2012, when the PD experimented American-style primaries, D'Alema wanted to defend the old party traditions, and he disagreed with the idea to convert the historic workers' party to the practices of Barack Obama's politics as supported by Veltroni. Since 2013, he was within the left-wing minority of the PD, alongside Pierluigi Bersani, Pippo Civati, and Roberto Speranza, to Matteo Renzi and the Renziani. His followers and those close to the position of D'Alema are known as dalemiani. Dalemiani criticize the PD's Veltroanian Charter. Dalemiani support a party with an anti-capitalist aspiration, in contrast to the majoritarian aspirations, akin to Britain and the United States, and the reform and amelioration of capitalism. They opposed the proposed Renzi's reforms for the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, whose defeat caused the end of Renzi as prime minister and its reforms of the party from old politics. In 2017, in opposition to Renzi's policies and leadership, he was one of the founders of the left-wing split from the PD, Article 1 – Democratic and Progressive Movement (Art.1), which became part of the centre-left political movement called Free and Equal (LeU). In the words of Francesco Cundari, author of the book Déjà-vu, in which he recounts twenty-five years of the Italian left, "[i]f on the one hand Veltroni and D'Alema can be reproached for a certain oligarchic conception of the party and of politics, on the other hand they should be recognized that in this way even the internal conflicts of that leadership group have never taken the form of tribal wars, as happened in the Democratic Party from the time of the Bersani–Renzi primary onwards." According to Cundari, more than Renzi, it was the importation of the American party model that marked its definitive split.

In the 2018 Italian general election, D'Alema was not elected a member of the Senate of the Republic in the single-member constituency for LeU. Since the 2018 general election, D'Alema, like Veltroni, left the political scenes and became an opinion leader. D'Alema became an Extraordinary Professor at Link Campus University, and continued his work as president of the Italianieuropei Foundation (since 2000) and director of the magazine of the same name, which he founded in 1998. During a party reunion in 2019 to celebrate his 70 years, D'Alema paraphrased Vladimir Putin's quote about the Soviet Union, and said: "Whoever wants to restore communism is brainless, whoever doesn't remember it is heartless... and I'm deeply sentimental."

European politics and foreign policy views

D'Alema was briefly a member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006. Since 2003, he has been a member of the scientific committee of Michel Rocard and Dominique Strauss-Kahn's association A gauche en Europe ("A Left in Europe"). He still figures on the European scene; he signed the George Soros letter ("As Concerned Europeans") and called for a stronger European integration. Three year after the peace-keeping role in the 2006 Israeli–Lebanon war and beyond, D'Alema became one of the favourite candidates for the charges of president of the European Council, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, or General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, without being appointed. Since 30 June 2010, D'Alema is the president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), the European political foundation of the PES. He was a friend of the Italian Freemason and banker Vincenzo De Bustis.

While Italian Foreign Minister in the second Prodi government, D'Alema took a proactive diplomatic stance during the 2006 Lebanon War. Italy led negotiations with the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni and was proposed by Israel to head the multinational peacekeeping mission Unifil. The dangers of the mission for Italian troops sparked warnings from the centre-right coalition opposition that it could prove a kamikaze mission, with the peacekeepers sandwiched between Israel and the well-armed Hezbollah. He pledged Italy's willingness to enforce the United Nations resolution on Lebanon and urged other European Union member states to do the same because the stability of the Middle East should be a chief concern for Europeans. In November 2013, ahead of the 2014 European Parliament election, he said: "We cannot ignore what the eurosceptics are saying. We must take it into account. But the problem is how to answer their arguments and how to offer an answer. I believe politics should provide solutions – otherwise, it becomes propaganda."

D'Alema has been an advisor and mediator in the weapon's traffic from Italy to Colombia.

Personal life

D'Alema is married to Linda Giuva, a professor at the University of Siena, and has two children, Giulia and Francesco. D'Alema's passions include association football, and he is a supporter of AS Roma, which he compared to the political left, and said "we who are not used to winning the big games, we trained to suffer and unprepared to rejoice. We remember the defeats, with the fear that there will always be penalties to miss in a European Cup final." Giulio Andreotti, the former prime minister of Italy, made him heir for life to the presidency of the Roma parliamentary group at Montecitorio. About other Italian football clubs, D'Alema said: "I admire Juve but, when they play, I always support the others. Cossutta made me sympathize with Inter by telling me it was called Internazionale. I like Rivera from Milan. I was the only one to defend him, making him undersecretary in my government. A serious one. Of his 4–3 against Germany he said: I only put my foot in, Boninsegna did everything."

Electoral history

Political career

Party politics

1975–1980: National Secretary of the FGCI

1981–1986: Regional Secretary of the PCI in Apulia

1986–1989: Editor of the daily newspaper L'Unità

1986–1992: Member of the PCI/PDS national secretariat

1992–1994: Chairman of the PDS members of Parliament

1994–1999: Leader of the PDS/DS

Since 1996: Vice-chairman of the Socialist International

1998–2007: Chairman of the DS

Institutional politics

1970–1976: Town councillor of Pisa

1985–1987: Regional councillor of Apulia

1987–2004: Chairman of the PCI/PDS/DS parliamentary group

1987–2013: Member of the Chamber of Deputies

1996–1998: Chairman of the Committee for Constitutional Reform

1998–2000: Prime Minister of Italy

2006–2008: Minister of Foreign Affairs

Awards

Officer of the Legion of Honour (France), 18 December 2001.

Grand Cross Knight of the Order of Merit (Chile), 2005.

Grand Cross Knight of the Order of Pope Pius IX (Vatican City), 20 November 2006.

Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (Austria), 2007.

Supreme awards from Palestine and South Korea.

Books

D'Alema published many books, several of which with Mondadori, which is controlled by Fininvest, the family holding company of Silvio Berlusconi, whose first government he staunchly opposed.

La crisi del paese e il ruolo della gioventù. Comitato Centrale della FGCI 26-27 gennaio 1976. Relazione del Compagno Massimo D'Alema ("The Country's Crisis and the Role of Youth: Central Committee of the FGCI 26–27 January 1976. Report by Comrade Massimo D'Alema"). 1976.

La formazione politica in un moderno partito riformatore ("Political Formation in a Modern Reform Party"). Edited with Franco Ottaviano. Rome: Togliatti Institute. 1988.

Il partito nelle aree metropolitane ("The Party in the Metropolitan Areas"). Edited with Sandro Morelli. Rome: Togliatti Institute. 1988.

Dialogo su Berlinguer ("Dialogue on Berlinguer"). With Paul Ginsborg. Florence: Giunti. 1994. ISBN 88-09-20545-6.

Un paese normale. La sinistra e il futuro dell'Italia ("A Normal Country: The Left and Italy's Future"). With Gianni Cuperlo and Claudio Velardi. Milan: Mondadori. 1995. ISBN 88-04-40847-2.

Progettare il futuro ("Shaping the Future"). Edited with Gianni Cuperlo and Claudio Velardi Milan: Bompiani. 1996. ISBN 88-452-2883-5.

La sinistra nell'Italia che cambia ("The Left in the Changing Italy"). Milan: Feltrinelli. 1997. ISBN 88-07-47013-6.

La grande occasione. L'Italia verso le riforme ("The Great Chance: Italy Towards Reforms"), Milan: Mondadori. 1997. ISBN 88-04-42161-4.

Parole a vista ("Words on Sight"). Edited by Enrico Ghezzi. Milan: Bompiani. 1998. ISBN 88-452-3777-X.